Cool-Tether Links Phones' Bandwidth To Make High-Speed Hotspots

Barence writes "Microsoft Research has found a novel way of beating the deplorably slow speeds of mobile broadband, by combining several phones together to make one high-speed hotspot. Dubbed Cool-Tether, the system harnesses the mobile data connection of multiple mobile handsets to build an on-the-fly Wi-Fi hotspot. 'To address the challenges of energy efficiency, Cool-Tether carefully optimises the energy drain of the WAN (GPRS/EDGE/3G) and Wi-Fi radios on smartphones,' Microsoft's research paper claims. 'We prototype Cool-Tether on smartphones and, experimentally, demonstrate savings in energy consumption between 38%-71% compared to prior energy-agnostic solutions.'"

Comments

like BitTorrent

[sopssa]

a novel way of beating the deplorably slow speeds of mobile broadband, by combining several phones together to make one high-speed hotspot.

Mobile operators will just love this! Considering the cell towers can be a bit slow already and especially so when many people are using them for internet, this will not magically provide better speed off it. But it lets users abuse the network same way that BitTorrent does - hammer the network so much that you get more while others suffer.

While operators already have unlimited 3G for cheap (not in USA, so they actually are unlimited), the only way slow speeds of mobile broadband is going to improve is to push for new technologies and make the operators improve their network. But not that 3G's 5Mbps would be that slow anyway.

Re:like BitTorrent

[kazade84]

I was actually thinking of something like this yesterday. With the rapid increase in Wifi + Internet enabled phones and devices, it could be possible to actually have an entirely distributed network just by linking together devices in range.

Perhaps that's where we should build the Internet 2, now governments around the world are doing everything they can to control the first one. :)

Re:like BitTorrent

[IndustrialComplex]

But it lets users abuse the network

Bittorrent?

I like to abuse my network by complaining how slow it is to responding to my requests for pictures of sandwiches and how much space its old equipment takes up. I always threaten to keep it off the surge protector or knock it off the shelf so I can get a nice new slim model with all the bells and whistles.

Re:like BitTorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Using bandwidth that you have PAID for is not abuse. A company overselling their capacity or promising more bandwidth than they provide is fraud however.

Re:like BitTorrent

[AliasMarlowe]

With the rapid increase in Wifi + Internet enabled phones and devices, it could be possible to actually have an entirely distributed network just by linking together devices in range.

And just imagine the legal complexities if someone actually ran a torrent over it, with unapproved content...

Re:like BitTorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

+1, I never really see this brought up. This is the truth. If Comcast/ATT/Verizon/Sprint has to throttle your bandwidth because you are clogging their pipes, it is THEIR problem. They sold you the bandwidth. If they can't provide then they shouldn't sell it.

Re:like BitTorrent

[bdenton42]

No reason it would have to be the same tower... just hammer one from each service provider (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular, etc.).

Re:like BitTorrent

[NotBornYesterday]

Mobile phone mesh networks actually aren't a new idea, although this seems to include a slightly new wrinkle. The benefit is not just aggregating the phone-to-network links for higher bandwidth, but lower energy consumption by making optimal use of the amount of data delivered while the phone is in an high-powered state. Microsoft's approach differs from yours and the link above in that this does not appear to be designed to allow you to go off-network onto a parallel, ad-hoc peer-to-peer mobile version of the internet. It's basically designed to trunk 3G phone-to-network connections together.

Re:like BitTorrent

[Aqualung812]

Specifically, the issue is that HSDPA only gives about 3Mbps per tower

I'm pretty sure you mean per channel. Multiple devices can use different frequencies from the same tower.

Re:like BitTorrent

[Endo13]

Or, they could do what any sane person would do, and realize that at any given moment only a tiny fraction of their users are using ANY bandwidth

Exactly. And that's precisely what makes the whole not-enough-bandwidth problem so ridiculous. No one's asking them to provide the total theoretical amount of bandwidth that they're selling. But they're overselling by so much that they can't even cover what their customers ARE trying to use, let alone what they're actually selling. It's basically the equivalent of an airline selling 500 tickets for a 120-passenger flight. Not to mention the fact that (in the US) they have already been paid by the government to add infrastructure and expand bandwidth.

What mobile company would support this?

[rotide]

Seriously, which mobile provider, at least in the US would support this? Most already don't like you tethering. I can't imagine their reaction to multiple customers pooling their services together to take full advantage of their mobile broadband.

Re:What mobile company would support this?

[NotBornYesterday]

Anyone want to take bets whether the iPhone store will allow this app? (Hey, since the US is delaying anti-gambling regulations, I'm still okay asking this, right?)

Meme redux

[minvaren]

So given the disruptive effect on the cell data network this would have, would it be more apt to call it a Grendel cluster?

But, but.......

[endeavour31]

Everyone here knows Microsoft cannot innovate!

Re:But, but.......

[jhoegl]

I dunno, I had the same thought as parent. You Mods do realize that the differences in Office 2010 and Office 2k8 are interface differences? You do realize the differences in Vista and WIndows 7 are mere "bug fixes", much like Win 95 and Win98 were. WinME doesnt count... ever. Innovation at Microsoft is like News on Fox, it just doesnt happen.

AKA JoikuBoost

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Way to innovate MS! JoikuBoost: "JoikuBoost joins multiple 3G connections from mobile phones and operator networks into one larger unified and shared bit pipe, accessible over WiFi from e.g. laptops."
Who wants to bet they'll get the patent anyway ?

Re:AKA JoikuBoost

[wjsteele]

Except for the fact that JoikuBoost doesn't manage the power utilization like Cool-Tether does. Also, this is actually a follow on to their previous invention called "Combine" which was announced in 2007. JoikuBoost appears to be a very recent (October 1, 2009) product.

Bill

out of the box on Linux

[jipn4]

You get this kind of thing out of the box on Linux: just plug in multiple phones and configure multiple internet connections; you get load balancing, on-demand dialing, and all that for free. Linux got this support years ago for dial-up modems, but mobiles phones look like dial-up modems to Linux anyway. It's not usually done with cell phones because it's expensive (that's why there's no simple UI for configuring it), but it's well documented and pretty easy to set up.

(Of course, with Windows and WinMo, it may actually be rocket science.)

Re:out of the box on Linux

[LandDolphin]

that's why there's no simple UI for configuring it

Well, for many people, they cannot do anything on a computer with out the "simple UI". So bringing something that a very small population knows how to do on a OS that most have not heard of to the general population might be something worth doing.

Good job

[HangingChad]

Microsoft Research has found a novel way of beating the deplorably slow speeds of mobile broadband...

Good job, research division. Now reluctantly hand it over to marketing which will:

- Tie it to Windows Mobile
- Cripple it to only work with Hotmail and Bing
- Junk it up with "partner channels"
- Drag out deployment long enough for Apple to be able to field something smaller, cooler and 5x more expensive six months ahead

Don't you need seperate gateways for this?

[anethema]

I'm actually curious how you combine the speeds from multiple devices which use the same gateway to get a single faster connection. Doesn't this thing normally require seperate gateways per connection?

The other way to get around this is to have 2 routers working for you doing basically the same thing, but the speedup is only between those two routers. To get faster internet speeds I'm pretty sure separate gateways are needed. Do they get around this ?

http://lartc.org/lartc.html#LARTC.LOADSHARE

Re:Don't you need seperate gateways for this?

[asdf7890]

I've considered similar for when traveling by train. Not necessarily multiple mobile phone connections, but at least one phone and a connection to the train's similarly reliable and very crowded wireless (the train wireless is sometimes noticeably more lethargic than a GPRS link).

The thought is a simple UDP relay/tunnel that can load balance packets over multiple connections (I have a little server out there that would act as the other end-point) and run OpenVPN over that channel for everything else. That way when both are working and able to send+receive packets I get two connections worth of bandwidth and when one stalls (as both often do, but often not at the same times) or grinds down to a speed at which it might as well be stalled/disconnected I might still have connectivity (just a little slower).

This could easily extend to multiple phones too (if I can get the netbook to work properly with two bluetooth adapters and have the phones paired up reliably), to be on different networks (as I pass through some areas my vodafone signal dies but orange still has coverage, and vice versa).

Of course this will add latency, but only a couple of 10s of ms which is small compared to that already found on either mobile phone or train wireless connections, and will result in a speed decrease when only one connection is active+capable due to the VPNs overhead, but it should provide me with a more reliable experience.

Unfortunately I've not found such an UDP relay (or something else that would do the job of muxing the connections to the same effect) though and don't have time to write+test my own right now, but it might be an interesting spare-time project when I next have enough spare time for it (unless someone beats me to it).

To cut a long story short and actually answer your question: if they are donig something not dissimilar to this then they are getting around the multiple gateways issue by defining their own local gateway and remote end-point which are intelligent enough to bond the different routes into a single link.

Bandwidth isn't the problem.

[merreborn]

It's not the bandwidth. It's the latency.

Ping on a cell connection runs around 200 ms, in my experience. *That's* the part that makes tethering suck -- with pages requiring dozens of images and javascript files these days, waiting for a 200ms round trip for each request adds up FAST.